the small. pressure listen. to them. as washington the news that will ships on troops or close this in libya there is growing concern the u.s. and u.k. could lead in minutes intervention in the country president obama says he's keeping all options open the un is ready to answer the crisis to its. results wrong of course in the middle east and north africa p.r. companies are being recruited to wash away the blood it seems britain's spin doctors of choice or leave him a saudi's image. and the u.s.

secretary of state hillary clinton campaigns for moral funks road washington's message after they see america's losing the media war the us is already spending over seven hundred million dollars a year on international broadcasting. our next big liberal and his guests all of you whether there's a democratic future for the middle east and north africa or the region will remain a hotbed of terror. came. along and welcome to crossfire gun control of l a world clamoring for change around the globe people are protesting against governments and tyrants can a self defined democratic west learn from the people of the arab middle east and how to create more just the side. kick.

start. to discuss of more revolutions are likely elsewhere in the world i'm joined by brendan o'neil in london he is editor of spiked in paris we cross to john locke and he is director of studies at the institute of democracy and cooperation and in phoenix we go to rachel alexander she is coeditor of the intellectual conservative and another member of our cross talk team yell on the hunger all right folks this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want to read and if i could go to you in london first. we what we've been seeing in the arab middle east that say let's be very generous of the last two months do you think that the powers that be in the west that have had so much influence in these countries over the last few decades i would say negative have digested the gravity of the change that is occurred in that region and what democracy means to people in the region. i don't think they have i think they underestimate the extent of what's happening in the arab world and i think they underestimated the extent to which

arab people want democracy because what we've seen in these uprisings is that people very clearly want more democratic control over their lives they want more choice they want more freedom and they've discovered that they're only going to get that by taking action themselves we can see from iraq and afghanistan and other disastrous nation building experiments launched by america and britain that democracy cannot be delivered from outside by an army it can only by be won by a people itself taking action this is what the arab uprisings really show us that shows that the arab people want more freedom and they show that they only they themselves can win that freedom without the intervention of the west john larkin if i can go to you i mean if it were looking at from a european perspective because i know you have a lot to say about the european union and i know you have a lot of opinions about democracy in the european union why don't you reflect upon what you have going on in the arab middle east in libya in tunisia eccentrics cetera and what's going on in the european union. i very much agree with brendan

about the inability and done desirability of the impossibility in undesirability of exporting democracy i'm not sure i agree so much with the his overall political interpretation of these events but i'm not an expert i tend to think that revolutions or mass movements of these kinds of multiple causes there may indeed be elements of the crowds in north africa and the middle east who want political change but there's also an important economic element in these events and in particular there have been very high rises in the cost of food driven incidentally largely by the quantity of easing and the mass production of dollars in america which has caused inflation around the world and particularly in these parts which are now undergoing such massive change so i think that in revolutions you off or decent big movements of this kind you often have various different factors coming together political ones yes but also very basic economic ones and that's really the

link i think to the events in wisconsin reinvents after all are mainly driven by it desire for economic things not so much for political ones ok rachel go to you in phoenix you've heard of range of opinion so far and it's only a couple minutes into the program where do you stand on what's going on when focus on the north africa right now is more driven for the desire of democracy economic hardships that are different vision for a society or even and i. was and where do you stand in all of us well as the uprisings have continued and i've been or following you know the more and more i've been seen it appears that they are more driven by a desire for stricter islamic regimes then on for true democratic reforms now i do believe there is some element of you know wanting democratic reforms but what you see the protesters chanting for is they want more government benefits they're not necessarily are demanding a representative democracy being put in place you know like we saw back in the.

nine hundred eighty nine revolutions that swept eastern europe we're seeing a lot of you know calls for. you know things that would turn the country into more of a socialist regime you know what have you and and i think you know this is reflective of a lot of middle eastern countries where they are and it's acceptable to have an autocratic regime as long as the government is providing you with a lot of benefits so i am really concerned that. that the changes that are going to result are not necessarily going to be the kind of you know pro western democracies that you know were hoping for ok brennan if i could go to you why should we hope for progress during democracy should we just hope for democracy that's what we preach all the time. yes democracies don't have to be progress and it's absolutely call themselves that's the nature of a democracy they decide what their country should represent but i think rachel is indulging in a fantasy notion here because there is no evidence at all that people are out demanding islamic regimes or islamic theocracy in fact in egypt there were very few

islamic people on the government's the muslim brotherhood was completely sidelined and taken by surprise by the mass outpouring of desire for change in tunisia they've had demonstrations in favor of secularism they've had demonstrations saying we want the government to be more secular we don't want islamism in this country so i just think lots of people in the west are looking at these uprisings they see strange looking brown people demanding change very loudly and very roundly and they think they must want an islamic regime like they have in iran and elsewhere that's not the case there is no evidence for it people want change they want control over their lives and i think we should support them in that. maybe continue on that theme here and i jump in go right ahead rachel this is crossed our guys but you're supposed to do go ahead i just want to jump in and say that's not true that there is not you know hard line clearance that are instigating a lot of these demonstrations i did friday it was the shiite religious leaders that

organized the protests that day in it i was in bahrain so it wasn't the primary opposition it was it was it actual hard line clerics ok you know that to the extent to the extent the islamics are involved they're on the back foot they're riding on the coattails of these demonstrations they're not leading them they're desperately hoping to make some mileage out of them i hope they don't but what i'm saying is that this is being led by mass groups of people not particularly well organized with no clear idea of what they want at the end but they are leaving it themselves the islamicists might be following but i believe they will be left behind john locke when are we going to have to change our definition the way demarco is kind of going on what you're saying here rachel if you don't agree with are you drinking with john. i mean the what rachel you kind of really repeated climate is something we've heard for a long long time for democracy is equated with the west i mean we do see a divergence in that right now because that may not be the case as we move forward and i think we would all agree even though we disagree on many points what's being

played out is going to take a long long time i think it's one of the most certain signs of intellectual the intellectual bankruptcy of the west and particularly of the united states that indeed the phrase pro western democracy is regarded as a play and has them it is regarded as self-evident that any democratic country will be pro western ultimate to put the point in even more in an even worse light in the light which i think it deserves countries are judged to be democratic to the extent that they are pro west in other words their foreign policy orientation is sufficient for them to qualify as democratic and that is obviously nonsense as brandon says people can choose whatever policy orientation they like so let's hope that indeed out of this in co eight out of these encourage movements which will lead we don't know where there may indeed be a collapse in this conceit that the west is superior and that all other countries are inevitably rather as marxists used to believe about the dialectical materialism

inevitably marching on a path to one for ordained goal rachel would you like to reply to that. well i'd like to point out you know and actually this is probably more in response to brennan but you know a recent zogby poll of egypt since found that sixty five percent of them want religious clerics to have more of a role in political government so to say that you know the people don't really know what they want and you know these demonstrations really are i mean about but you know you know hardly anybody rachel that means that most americans want to have a more christian driven america i mean what does that mean it's going to be run by priests and and pastors like that could be one interpretation of the polls. i cannot see upon america finding that sixty five percent of americans want pre-sale have more of a role and i can see why i didn't say that when i'm fairly well because i think you

these go ahead i mean you have a christian nation doesn't it so him being run by a priest ok and have values that's what i'm getting at. i think what's important here is to understand why two relatively speaking islamised have a lot of influence in arab countries and one important reason why is because secularist democratic left wing movements were destroyed in those countries in a long period of time and they were often destroyed with the backing and the approval of the west in particular washington by ambassador that for example in egypt who are least islamists to take on secularist movements because he considered them a threat to his rule no wonder in these countries the islamicist have a lot of influence is because they do so by default not because they have the passionate support the people but because the kind of movements that people could support have been have either withered away or been destroyed cynically by western intervention and by west supported dictators so let's get that into perspective having said that this is a relative issue his loyalists are not all powerful they are not going to take over

in these countries and i think we have to get into perspective the fact that even a country like iran is no longer like iran was in one nine hundred seventy nine so the idea that egypt which is a very different place altogether will become like a rally once the fantasy borne of western nightmares rather than eastern reality john it will be if i know you before we go to break here again are we conflating we have to change our discourse because if you have a country where the predominant religion is islam then i guess it means it can't be democratic i mean we have to break that one is well. well iran has been mentioned although there's no turmoil there right now as far as we know iran precisely is the most democratic muslim state not familiar with the political structures of indonesia but among the middle eastern states it is by far and away the most democratic and it of course is never classified as that because it has a foreign policy which is basically opposed to that of washington so indeed this is a dream that we have to this is a truth that we have to get rid of all right i'm going to go to

a short break here and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the pro-democratic mood around the globe state party. that's me tom foreman and is to meet the creation of the of the food system the global food system is not created to feed the people of the world is created to maximize the profits. journal trading the actual cash physical grain your trading promises for the grain to be delivered

a month or six months or twelve months or eighteen months in the future. for reasons moderate silver or gold they can be negotiated in their hurted summary. place. water. possibly it's not traded now but it could be in the future. download the official antti application q i phone the i pod touch from the i choose apps to. chauncey's life on the go. video on demand on t.v.'s my fuel costs and r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the calm. to keep.

warm. welcoming across talk on fuel about three mind you were talking about the revolutionary flew around the globe. to kick. but first let's see what russians think is behind the arab revolutions. uprisings for other as protests week their world talking regimes should other governments worry about the same fate some speculate their chairman is concerned the democratic who happening in the middle east may soon visit its more doors others observe such was overblown the russian public opinion research center asks citizens who is behind them as the most re shows across the arab world thirty three percent say it is the entire population of the country alone think the protests are bad by those

fighting for their rights eighty percent see the poor speaking out opposition powers garnered six percent and then you thought so could they then send the arab middle east have far reaching implications peter. ok granted i could go to you again in london i mean where do we go from here because a lot of people in north america right now at least these protests in their various from country to country they're not overtly anti-american or anti western you can certainly see some elements of it maybe just as many islamic elements of my more minority opinions right now but if there is a western intervention to try to determine outcomes now because a lot of people on the ground would say western powers determine those outcomes for forty years we could see a growing anti western side coming to grow as they develop their democracy whatever it means to them. i think it would be

a disaster if we had western intervention because what's happening in libya in particular but also in egypt intern is here before it is that people have made themselves into historic subjects they've made themselves into the subjects of history if we have western intervention we will turn them into the objects of western pity will turn them into objects of washington's real politic and that would be a real disaster would steal the democratic initiative from the people who want to hold gadhafi and others to account and it's only them who can do that but i think more importantly than that these are the best thing about these uprisings is they have exposed the mind blowing hypocrisy of the west and of western leaders and western commentators because for ten years western leaders and many commentators told us that we had to deliver cannot proceed to the arab world we had to bring it to them because they were incapable of doing it themselves and now that they are demanding democracy we're all saying oh no you can't go too far please calm down go home or you'll turn into another iran so western intervention will take a long time to recover from this because it has exposed the extraordinary hypocrisy

and double standards of the western intervention they claim to be for democracy that is in fact allergic to it when it arises when you think about bad regional i mean the there's the western critical united states have to start from scratch and really kind of really learn what the word democracy means because if democracy is the only way you can bring it to our countries through invasion maybe the west needs to rethink well i mean come on look at you know how well we did in japan i mean you can't say that you can't is now what i thrive in democracy you know really disagree on it and i did then he had given me more dates japan attacked the united states and then these historical references ok didn't attack the united states well he. ok but you know a lot of these countries are hotbeds for terrorists you know and they're helping contribute to producing these terrorists and i think that the u.s. does have a self interest in protecting ourselves we don't want to you know foment more of.

a rant is the common weal in riyadh for forty years the united states actually perpetuated terrorist groups developing in the greater middle east because of its policy but you have it in reverse i do believe i do i blew do believe that the united states and its own self-interest which is entitle to protect has tried to pick and choose the least worse of the volatile situations and sometimes in hindsight you look back and you say you know i didn't we didn't realize that you know these people's way they would turn out the way they did and a lot of times it's a gamble but what are you going to do when you want to you know prevent another nine eleven with three thousand americans killed from happening again ok john you want to feel down there because i'm going to make my point go ahead and use the united states well my country the rule of interest go ahead. no i think that there are we've discussing the relation between these events and what's happening in america as if they were opposites but you asked us at the beginning heated to

reflect on whether america has and thing to learn from these movements and i think it does because i believe that these movements are at least in part a symptom of the collapse of the world financial system i mentioned the quantitative easing in other words the massive printing of dollars a few moments ago and this has had an inflationary effect this is driven up food prices. that's one of the reasons why people are rioting in north africa by the same token in wisconsin we're seeing public sector workers being asked for actively take pay cuts or the removal of various privileges because the culture of debt on which the united states and like most western states has lived for so long is coming to an end the chickens are coming home to roost the bills are having to be paid so we're seeing an unraveling of the really the entire post-war financial international system here and that's why i think these events are actually linked in a way which people probably haven't even thought about running you want to feel

they're one that's an interesting way of looking at it here because it is it is time global finance and your poll politics together it. well i don't go as far as john i think where i disagree with him i mean i think economic problems would have to be a trigger for some people but they triggered more profound underlying unresolved political question was which was a democratic one who controls these countries and in whose interests so people might have been pushed out into the street because they can no longer afford an amount of food in the past but they soon came face to face with a much more historic and profound issue which is what i think they are now i think over i agree with john that what we are witnessing is something really extraordinary which is the final unraveling of the last existing post-war order you know all the other post second world war orders fell apart the division of europe the division of africa among western supported strong men those things fell apart over the past twenty years the arab regimes were really the last existing thing

that came into existence after the second world war so what we're witnessing here is something extremely historic and profound and it's been driven by ordinary people not by western governments which are you said in hindsight we can learn some things what do you think that the what were the mistakes of western powers made in north africa and what should they avoid in the future. well i mean you know i was worried it was a story in a way that was working well right i mean i mean i mean propping up the taliban in the one nine hundred eighty s. i mean we can all of back and say was that such a good idea i mean you know that that's a clear example of where you know we might have been wrong but i you know i just want to jump in and argue with john comparing the wisconsin union protests to the middle east uprisings i mean that's outrageous i mean come on the united states we're one of the richest wealthiest countries in the world that we were very well off here and you know the unions are protesting because they want more socialist

benefits they want to turn the united states into more of a socialist country and they're you know they're being very greedy with their demands because we can't afford it this isn't all tied into you know the reason in the middle east people are protesting that those people are those people really are suffering and so you know to try to compare that to the only similarities are you know the people in wisconsin protesting and people the middle east people want more government benefits but they're in vastly different situations and you know the united states we're not you know on the verge of collapse unless we. you know accede to their demands and continue to pay these over inflated government government benefits that we can't afford ok john you want to go there because it looks to me the united states is about bankruptcy so i don't see where all the wealth is well i wasn't quite sure where the reaction is saying the protests in the middle east want more socialism or whether they want more freedom. you can compare in the thing you can compare apples and pears and decide that they're different

point most that they are connected to these events whether they are the same comparable or very different is another is another issue i'm saying they're connected they are causally connected they're connected by the bankruptcy of the american backed international financial system with quantitative easing the united states as it has attempted to export it's probably. pumping the world full of dollars and one of the effects is rising food prices and one of the results and that is these protests ran and if i go back to you in london i really find very i was an academic historian before i went into this line of business i find very interesting what you what you were saying about for the last part of the world that is being put into place into the post post post war era how do you think it's going to play out geopolitically i mean when we look at the influence of western powers they have had and in these countries that could radically change what do you see next happening here what kind of realignment or some kind of you know a third way we're bait you know they're not going to side with anyone they're going

to have their own trajectory. i think that's the thing that's up for question that's the thing that's unclear what will happen next once these regimes are rattle and the more they are rather good better in my view there's the question of what will happen to israel what will happen with iran my instinct is that iran will try to assert some kind of control over the vacuums that might appear in this region and try to become a dominant player even more so than it is that will be an interesting dynamic i think there will be some kind of regional interaction between the new governments rise to try and create a kind of arab block and i think the west's intervention in this part of the world will be severely weakened by this it will be more difficult for the west to interfere and to direct things in its own interests that is a good thing but what i hope is that out of this. demonstrations there is more ordinary people's control over their everyday affairs i disagree that they are seeking more government benefits and more state intervention into their lives what

i see when i look at these uprisings is of people who want to live more economically comfortably but also who want more freedom and choice who want freedom from state intervention and state regulation and authoritarianism and want to be able to determine their own affairs that is a very very positive thing and i think it's really dangerous for us to look at it as just the outpouring of an islamic hotheads that's not what it is at all ok rachel i'm going to give you the last word on this program here you know the democratic processes that are going on and going to have a good use of a good thing for the world or a bad thing in the world. it could be a good thing if they really are about democratic reform and i just want to point out in yemen oh man and jordan a demonstrator there demanded more government benefits and all three leaders responded by giving them more expanded benefits so that's not not accurate and i just wanted to say to peter you say that the us is not wealthy come on we all we can we all get a go to college education we all have air conditioned houses we have brand new cars i mean but rachel the problem is there's a thing i can say ok this week the country can't keep paying the way it is been

doing because it can't continue this process unfortunately we've run out of time and i would have liked you to reply many thanks my guest today in paris london and in phoenix and thanks to my viewers for watching this yorkie see you next time and remember we. can. still. remember you the latest in science and technology from the realms. we've got the future covered.

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in the united kingdom and she's available in soon enough for the month forty one hotel home the only way for her tough.